WANDeRiNG MiND!

After a very long gap, am posting something sensible here today. Since writing about the sixth sense which, unfortunately I couldn’t conclude as yet, a lot of things happened in my life which literally turned my world upside down. But that’s not for a post. People concerned, know about it. They will deal with it. And once things are all back up straight, I’ll write the concluding part of my “trilogy” on the sixth sense. Because, it wouldn’t make any sense to me otherwise.

So let’s see what else I can post about. Well, I’ll start off with a movie I just watched. Blood Diamond. A drama, an adventure and a thriller… starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Connelly, Djimon Hounsou, Michael Sheen, Arnold Vosloo etc. and directed by Edward Zwick.

The plot: Set against the backdrop of the chaos and civil war that enveloped 1990s Sierra Leone, Blood Diamond is the story of Danny Archer (DiCaprio), an ex-mercenary from Zimbabwe, and Solomon Vandy (Hounsou), a Mende fisherman. Both men are African, but their histories and their circumstances are as different as any can be until their fates become joined in a common quest to recover a rare pink diamond.

While in prison for smuggling, Archer learns that Solomon, who was taken away from his family and forced to work in the diamond fields, has found and hidden the extraordinary rough stone. With the help of Maddy Bowen (Connelly), an American journalist whose idealism is tempered by a deepening connection with Archer, the two men embark on a trek through rebel territory, a journey that could save Solomon’s family and give Archer the second chance he thought he would never have.

This is the second movie of 2006 that starred DiCaprio and man, did he have a great year! The Departed, where he worked yet again with Martin Scorsese, was a wonderful movie. And Blood Diamond was beautiful. It’s director Edward Zwick whose earlier movies include The Last Samurai (2003) and Legends Of The Fall (1994) has a way with touching your hearts. There is a light romance that buds in between all this, but it sure adds to the feel of the movie than being just a boy-meets-girl thing.

A lot of movies have been made with the misery of people in Africa as the subject. And many has raked in the big moolah! I sometimes wonder if any of that actually goes to the welfare of the people who really suffer out there in Africa. Every time something valuable was found in Africa, the people there had suffered. Ivory, gold, oil, diamonds. People who it really belonged to, were tortured and looted by the rest of the world, directly or indirectly. The native war-lords traded the diamonds and other valuables for arms and ammunition.

Through out the movie you get to see the horrible state of things, and the cheap price life has. How the rebels make sure the people don’t go to vote, how they take away little boys and turn them into one of them. How the innocent kids become one of the child soldiers and go around slaughtering people. Archer and Solomon meets an old man in a village where the R.U.F (Revolutionary United Front) just passed by leaving almost everyone dead, and he tells them: “Hope they don’t find oil here, or we have a real problem.” Am not sure if that was meant to be humorous or…???

What a horrible fate for such a beautiful land. So much bloodshed! Like they say, the soil is red from all the blood that was shed fighting for that land. Archer says “Sometimes I wonder if God would ever forgive us for all the things we do to each other. But then I look around and realize God left this place a long time ago.”

But then, like Archer says, TIA. This Is Africa! And I would say we sure were fortunate not to have been born there.

The same old adventure story maybe, but exceptionally well made, this is a movie worth watching and certainly one for the collection. And it has a wonderful score by James Newton Howard. You could listen to it here. I just love it!

Watch the movie. Tell me what thoughts go through your mind when you do. And one request. Nothing is worth the blood of innocent lives. Let’s never encourage conflict diamonds. The blood diamonds!